"We get a lot of people who are looking just for them," Aaron said. "Nobody makes anything like those."

And the plushy barriers don't just separate fingernails from faces. They can also protect breastfeeding mothers from getting scraped, keep babies from scratching eczema and reduce germ-spreading when strangers touch infants' hands in public.

"We also think it's important for parents to let Baby spend some time without the mitts," especially as newborns begin to "discover their hands," Ebuen said.

Yeo and Ebuen, both 36-year-olds who work from home about three days a week, plan to launch two new baby products this summer.

Seventeen months after receiving their first shipment of 8,000 guavamitts, the business has already turned a profit, though "we haven't gotten paid yet," Yeo said.

They thought those 8,000 mitts would last a year, she said. "Now we sell that in two months."

The duo met as freshmen at Cleveland High School in Southeast Portland. Yeo worked in international business and design for Nike, Hewlett-Packard and Ziba. Ebuen stayed in Oregon and found her way to Intel, where she worked in project management and studied business.

Both women always planned to be entrepreneurs.

"I'm very comfortable taking risks," Ebuen said.

Guavamitts, which sell for $12 a pair, come in 10 prints and two sizes.

Once Ebuen came up with the idea for guavamitts, the pair designed and tested dozens of prototypes, finally settling on Chinese-made bamboo and organic cottons and Portland-made prints.

The mitts are manufactured in China, then shipped from Shanghai to distributor warehouses and Yeo's and Ebuen's homes in Beaverton, where they package and ship them.

"They really make it around the world a few times," Yeo said. The company tries to limit its environmental impact by reducing the chemicals used to harvest the bamboo and using recycled materials in packaging.

In a boon to busy parents, guavakids' next revision of guavamitts will be pre-washed and less likely to shrink in washing machines.

Ebuen and Yeo draw on local resources, from the Portland State University students who intern for the company to the area's collegial entrepreneur-mom network, Yeo said.

Yeo's daughters modeled the mitts when the company launched, and Ebuen's daughter named two of the prints (hopscotch gray and bubbles berry).

As moms, "we don't want to create another frivolous thing" that new parents receive at baby showers and never use, Yeo said. "We are the consumers."

Update: This story has been updated to clarify that while guavamitts are currently machine-washable, the next revision will be pre-washed and less likely to shrink in washing machines.